NEIGHBORHOOD REPORT: UPPER WEST SIDE

NEIGHBORHOOD REPORT: UPPER WEST SIDE; Gathering Up the Fragments To Restore an Old Treasure

By JUDITH MATLOFF

Published: April 21, 2002

The carrot, spinach and butter-colored mosaic mural at West 104th Street and Broadway has survived several landlords since it was installed in 1947.

The sprawling abstract work by Max Spivak has adorned a coffee shop, a storage center and now the storefront of the Regent Family Shelter, which occupies the city-owned building. Mr. Spivak was the art director of the W.P.A. program in New York, and much of his work has been destroyed. One of his few other surviving murals adorns the children's room of the Astoria branch of the New York Public Library.

Landmark West, a preservation group, was heartened to learn that Common Ground, a nonprofit group that helps the homeless, was leasing the storefront to convert into a Ben & Jerry's ice cream shop. Common Ground assured the preservationists the mural would not be harmed.

But on April 4, Michael Gotkin, a Landmark West consultant who lives nearby, noticed that half the mural was missing and found fragments in a Dumpster. ''I was horribly upset that this has endured since 1947 and then all it took was a couple hours of a sledgehammer,'' he said.

Common Ground's executive director, Roseanne Haggerty, said pieces of the mural had crumbled off, even though workers tried to avoid damaging it. After consulting with a civic group, who assured her of the work's value, she decided it should be restored and incorporated into the new design. ''This is a very happy ending to the story,'' she said. JUDITH MATLOFF

Photo: Max Spivak's mosaic in 1947, the year it was installed. (Architectural Record)